Bubble Meter is a national housing bubble blog dedicated to tracking the continuing decline of the housing bubble throughout the USA. It is a long and slow decline. Housing prices were simply unsustainable. National housing bubble coverage. Please join in the discussion.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Houses are shrinking!

The median home size in America was near 2,300 square feet at the peak of the market in 2007, with many McMansions topping 10,000 square feet.

Today, the median home size has dropped to about 2,100 square feet and more than one-third of Americans say their ideal home size is actually under 2,000 square feet, according to a survey by real-estate site Trulia.

“The whole glow of bigness kind of wore off all of a sudden,” said Sarah Susanka, an architect and the author of “The Not So Big House” book series.

Builders are responding by chopping out rooms that people just don’t use anymore, particularly formal living rooms and sitting rooms.

A couple of points: First, the peak of the market was in 2005 or 2006, depending on whether you're measuring home buying activity or prices, respectively. Second, with so few homes being added to the existing stock there's no way the median home has shrunk by about 10% in three years. The sizes listed are probably the medians for new homes, not all homes, although the author doesn't say that.